How to add subtitles to video podcasts March 2, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Podcasts, HowTo, Video, mashups, interface, flash, Web Services , 2 commentsAt BarCampMiami, one of the folks in my podcast session had a question about creating a multi-lingual podcast. I instantly suggested that photocasting with something like SlideFlickr and including an audio file would be simplest and very shareable. Visuals certainly have the power to transcend the barriers of language (if not culture). Still, she was hoping for a more flexible answer, like subtitling videos.
I had certainly seen Rocketboom and other vlogs include subtitles and have mutli-language support, but I was skeptical about finding a cross-platform tool that could get the job done.
I did some searching and found out Google Video supports subtitles if you’ve already made the file - OK, but how do I make one? Linux has lots of tools available, but I don’t think that will help my friend in this case. 
Then I started finding the web-based subtitle solutions via del.icio.us, and at the bottom of page 3 hit paydirt. There was a compelling cross-platform downloadable tool in Java (cross-platform), but I had trouble getting video playback to work on my mac. I could see the video frames alright, but for moving pictures Jubler was no help. It required MPlayer to work, which I have, but something wasn’t right, so I gave up and went to the web.
Next on my past-tense journey was subtitle.in, the best subtitler of the bunch (I also tried a tool that required use of Google Video and wouldn’t allow YouTubage). I have two complaints about subtitle.in:
- Poor support for scrubbing (I assume this is the fault of the video compressing party, YouTube in this case)
- Inability to edit the starting time of a subtitle, just duration and text (but they have a workaround)
After some playing around, I noticed you could move the start time of the subtitle by half-a-second, but the controls for this were unintuitive at best. Try to see if you understand from this image. Me either. They’re under the list of titles and say “< Prev 0.5 sec" and "Forward 0.5 sec >“. Since I figured out that the “Delete” key removed the currently selected title, this was a logical next step, but I don’t know why we couldn’t just type in the time. My anal self needs that level of granularity.
Time appears to be broken into 100-frames per second? Not sure how that works, but the titles seemed to play back fine.
Tip: Type out all of your titles before you get them in this tool or any other subtitling utility, and make notes about when each phrase starts, with a minute:second attached; this will go much more quickly for you. If you’re like my friend and you want to translate the video into 4 languages (English, Spanish, French, Portuguese), keeping your notes and times straight will be a huge boost in throughput.
Check out a sample video at subtitle.in - as of this writing, I only did 3 screens of subtitles, so don’t go looking for anything past the first blackout.
Photos from London November 18, 2007
Posted by Ryan in : Site News, Travel, London, photos, flash , 2 comments
It was awesome. I’m going back at least twice next year. I have lots to catch up on, but it doesn’t feel like a chore. I’m getting some nice solidification of some of my crazy ideas, and some perspective on some of my old ones. 2008 will be the best year ever, and I have Kait and London to thank for it in part.
I have a few more photos to edit/upload yet, but that will be reflected in this slieshow when they’re ready. This player also has pics from my last trip to London in April as well. Cheers!
Forget Flex, Go OpenLaszlo August 24, 2007
Posted by Ryan in : Links, Video, Wikipedia, Reviews, Browsers, Trends, Standards, interface, OpenLaszlo, flash , 3 commentsNote: Mike G. from Central Florida PHP is giving a talk about Flex this Saturday at DeVry @ Millenia.
A good friend of mine, Jake, recently visited Orlando raving about Adobe’s Flex, and how it was going to make Flash development for people who think in HTML and Object-Oriented programming much simpler and faster. I went looking into Flex and discovered OpenLaszlo. Laszlo used to be a Flash-only framework, but it can now publish DHTML just as easily, and with a few added bonuses you don’t get with Flash, like including an iFrame.
After watching the OpenLaszlo 4 Programming Tutorial Screencast, I’m convinced that Laszlo is more capable than Flex, and there is less proprietary code to learn since you use Javascript instead of Actionscript. It’s all ECMA, XML and xPath, so I guess at some point it becomes 6 vs. a half dozen, but I will mention one small caveat: iPhone compatible. Oh yes, I’ve seen the first iPhone app in Laszlo, and it’s pretty and touch-screen happy. (I think it goes without saying that if it works on iPhone, it can work with all major browsers)
Am I raving? I’m not allowed to rave, because I haven’t tried both systems, but from where I’m sitting this is another situation where an equal amount of training and no expensive development tools are going to get your job done in the same amount of time, and end up being more flexible, easily extended and powerful. You can convince any boss of that if you’ve got all the information.
Under the hood from Wikipedia:
Laszlo applications can be deployed as traditional Java servlets, which are compiled and returned to the browser dynamically. This method requires that the web server be running the OpenLaszlo server.
Alternatively, Laszlo applications can be compiled from LZX into a binary SWF file, and loaded statically into an existing web page. This method is known as SOLO deployment. Applications deployed in the manner lack some functionality of servlet-contained files, such as the ability to consume SOAP web services and XML remote procedure calls.
Hear that? Static! One score for Flex is the ability to run as a desktop app (using AIR/Apollo), but that requires a download, and that’s a no-no on the internet.
Do you know Pandora uses Laszlo? That’s a pretty app, and yes it runs in Flash, but I bet it doesn’t have to. The Behr ColorSmart app is pretty nice too, and no hand-keyframed Flash? Love it. Wikipedia says Yahoo!, Earthlink and the Internet Archive are known to use Laszlo as well. I like those websites too.
Last but not least, it’s open source! Published under IBM’s Common Public License, which is a less-lawsuit inspiring type of GPL. Flex is supposed to be published under the Mozilla licensing, but that version is still in beta. Laszlo has been open source for 3 years now. Eat it, Adobe. I’m not giving you guys another penny.
I’ll be very proud to integrate some Laszlo apps into Petentials, which is built entirely on open source software - Drupal, PHP, MySQL, Apache and Linux.
